Parshat Metzora

Rabbi Leonard A. Sharzer, M.D.

When I tell people that Parashat Metzora and Parashat Tazri·a, which we read last week, are among my favorite parashiyot, they often respond, "Well of course, you were a physician and they are filled with medical information." But if Tazri·a and Metzora are to be read as medical texts, there would be very little point in reading them at all. For one thing, the dominant subject of the texts is something called tzara'at and we really have no idea what that is. Though often translated as leprosy, modern scholarship is quite consistent that whatever the condition is, it is not what modern medicine knows as leprosy. More importantly, besides not knowing what the described condition really is or precisely what some of the specific terms mean, I would like to suggest that these chapters were never intended to be read as medical texts. There is no discussion of etiology; that all comes in commentaries which seetzara'at as a punishment for sin, typically the sin of slander or gossip (lashon ha-ra). Nor is there any mention of prevention or of treatment, which we would expect even in ancient times if this were in any way intended as a medical treatise. Rather, what we have is a manual that instructs the priests if, when, and how to perform purification rituals on the affected individuals after recovery.

The Kli Yakar, the 17th-century biblical commentator, interpreted these texts allegorically. He wrote that they are speaking about spiritual maladies and what kinds of transgressions would have led to the state of tum'ah (impurity) described in the Torah. But I believe even this metaphoric approach, with its attention to the details of physical conditions and the associated purification rituals, is missing the forest for the trees.

I believe there is something else going on here altogether. The narrative arc of Parashat Metzora moves from a discussion of the reentry ritual of persons following recovery from the skin afflictions of tzara'at, to tzara'at which affects the walls and contents of individuals' houses, to a discussion of genital discharges (zav/zavah) in men and women. It is a movement from more public manifestations to more private manifestations of these conditions. Lesions of the skin are apparent to anyone with whom the one afflicted comes into even the most superficial social contact. One's house is more private, shared with family and close friends. Tzara'at in the house or of the house can be hidden from the general public but not from those one holds more closely. Finally, genital discharges, the most private, are hidden from all but those with whom we are most intimate, and sometimes known only to the one affected. And yet all require some level of separation and some ritual for reentry into an intimate relationship, a domiciliary relationship, a social/public relationship.

Rabbi Leonard A. Sharzer, MD, is associate director for bioethics of the Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies, JTS 

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for additional insights on this week's parsha and others, visit The JTS Torah Commentary archive: http://www.jtsa.edu